Two years of desperate fighting followed, and the Danes were victorious almost everywhere. At length Alfred was forced to withdraw with the little band which still followed him to the marshes of Somersetshire. Here, in the midst of a vast morass where the Tone and the Parret join their waters, lay a low lift of ground some two acres in extent, girded in by almost impassable fen-lands. This was the island of Athelney, and here Alfred threw up a fort, and waited and longed for happier days. It was about this time that the fugitive king, flying from his foes, entered the hut of a cowherd and begged for shelter. In the hut occurred that incident which is so familiar to every reader of English history. Asser tells the story, and doubtless he had it from Alfred’s own lips. It happened that on a certain day the wife of the cowherd prepared to bake her bread. The king, sitting near the hearth, was making ready his bows and arrows and other warlike implements, when the rough countrywoman beheld her loaves burning at the fire. She ran forward and hastily removed them, scolding the king for his inattention and carelessness:— “Casn’t thee mind the ca-akes, man, and doossen zee ’em burn? I’m bound thee’s eat ’em vast enough, zo zoon as ’tis thee turn.” “The unlucky woman,” continues Asser, “little thought that she was addressing the King Alfred.” We can readily imagine the momentary anger of the king as he heard the shrill clamour of the angry housewife, and the good-natured smile that almost immediately followed when he recognized the justice of the reproof. Legend, which has been very busy with this period of eclipse in Alfred’s career, tells us that he persuaded his host to study, and that in after and happier years the cowherd held high office in the Church. Though apparently at his last extremity, Alfred did not abandon the struggle. Scarcely a day passed but he sallied forth at the head of his little band, to assail such forces of the enemy as approached his neighbourhood. In this guerilla warfare, amidst the swamps whose secret paths were quite unknown to the stranger, Alfred schooled himself in the arts of surprise, rapid onset, and equally rapid retreat. Patriotic Englishmen joined him in his fastness, and day by day his forces grew. At length the dark night passed away, and the dawn of a new day began to flash the horizon. The hour of deliverance had arrived.